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It was, without exaggeration, one of the most plainly furnished rooms she had ever seen. A long mahogany table with eight large mahogany chairs, a half inch pile of velvety rug on the floor and a huge chandelier in the middle of the ceiling constituted the furniture. Not a picture, not a cabinet or filing case broke the blankness of the brown painted walls.

For a moment she stopped to consider. Brainard waited and watched her narrowly.

“There isn’t a place to put this transmitter except up above that chandelier,” she said at length.

He gave her his hand as she stepped on a chair and then on the table. There was a glimpse of a trim ankle. The warmth and softness of her touch caused him to hold her hand just a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. A moment later he was standing on the table beside her.

“This is the place, all right,” she said, looking at the thick scum of dust on the top of the reflector.

Quickly she placed the little black disc close to the center on the top of the reflector. “Can you see that from the floor?” she asked.

“No,” he answered, walking about the room, “not a sign of it.”

“I’ll sit here,” she said in just a tremor of excitement over the adventure, “and listen while you talk in the board room.”

Brainard entered. It seemed ridiculous for him to talk to himself.

“If the microphone works,” he said at length, “rap on the desk twice.” Then he added, half laughing to himself, “If it doesn’t, rap once–Constance.”

A single rap came in answer.

“If you couldn’t hear,” he smiled entering her office, “why did you rap once!”

“It didn’t work smoothly on that last word.”

“What–Constance?”

He thought there was a subtle change in their relations since the microphone incident. At any rate she was not angry. Were they not partners?

“I think it will be better if I turn that microphone around,” she remarked. “I placed it face downwards. Let me change it.”

Again he helped her as she jumped up on the board room table. This time his hand lingered a little longer in hers and she did not withdraw it so soon. When she did there was a quick twinkle in her eyes as she straightened the microphone and offered her hand to him again.

“Jump!” he said, as if daring her.

A moment she paused. “I never could take a dare,” she answered.

She leaped lightly to the floor. For just a moment she seemed about to lose her balance. Then she felt an arm steadying her. He had caught her and for an instant their eyes met.

“Well, Rodman–I scarcely thought it was as brazen as this!”

They turned in surprise.

Mrs. Brainard was standing in the doorway.

She was a petite blonde little woman of the deceptive age which the beauty parlors convey to thousands of their assiduous patrons.

For a moment she looked coldly from one to the other.

“To what am I indebted for the pleasure of this unexpected visit, Sybil?” asked Brainard with sarcastic emphasis. “I shall finish those letters to-morrow, Miss Dunlap. You need not wait for them.”

He held the door to his own office open for Mrs. Brainard.

Sybil Brainard shot a quick glance at Constance. “Well, young lady,” she said haughtily, “do you realize what you are doing and with whom you are?”

“It isn’t necessary, Sybil, to bother about Miss Dunlap. The lights were out of order and I found Miss Dunlap standing on the table trying to fix them. You came just in time to see her jump down. By the way, Worthington seems to be another who works late. He left only a few minutes ago.”

Constance passed a restless night. To have got wrong at the very start worried her. Over and over she thought of what had happened. And always she came back to one question. What had Brainard meant by that reference to Worthington?

He came in late the next day, however. Still, there was no change in his manner as he greeted her. The incident had not affected him, as it had her. Neither of them said anything about it.